Life matters. Safety matters. Economy matters. We all acknowledge that any action that reduces the risk of accidents must be promoted. A special situation arises in offshore platforms, where helicopter approach and landing (A&L) operations are far from being secure (300 accidents between 2000 and 2005). More than 75% of accidents between 1975 and 2001 occurred during A&L, most of them (66%) being related with installation design (dense obstacles), and most causes related with human errors and bad weather.

This project focuses on increasing safety the EU way, through an innovative use of carrier technologies encouraged by EU SESAR program. PALU follows these guidelines to disrupt the market of A&L high precision guiding systems with a product that will make our young, ambitious and innovative StartUp the provider of reference. 90% of offshore wind farms are located in Europe so we are contributing substantially to the safety of our installations and our workers. Also, O/G rigs in the North Sea lead the rate of accidents (mostly because of bad weather), and we intend to help minimise this rate.

Apart from the human drama, there is also the strong economic impact of losing highly specialised personnel (rate of casualties is >75% when a helicopter accident occurs), helicopters ($15-$25 million on average) and cargo. Even in the absence of incidents, aborting an A&L operation has a significant economic impact (fuel, salaries, impact of cargo delayed, etc.).